Mercenaries: Shakahnna
by enRAGEd
Summary: A contest entry from Deviant Art. Armed to the teeth and spoiling for a fight, Shakahnna finds herself pursuing an Umbrella scavenger team through an otherwise deserted installation. Violence and gore come as standard.
1. First Movement

**First Movement: The Lady, Fortune**

_Unrecorded time; undisclosed location_

Lucky devil...

The same two words were repeating over and over at the back of Shakahnna Morgan's mind as she approached the outer boundary of the Umbrella compound, her feelings a mixture of fear, anticipation and barely restrained elation. Surveying the looming buildings that protruded from within the walled area with a quiet awe, her mask of manic rapture would have increased all the more had it been possible at the knowledge that it was all for her. An entire complex of guilty Umbrella employees and their pet abominations for her to wipe out, and at the heart of it all, the ultimate fifty point target. One hundred points if she played her cards right.

Pushing the pleasing thought aside once more, she quickly assessed her condition and equipment. She had been walking for a few minutes in the direction that the GPS attached to her belt indicated was the way to her secluded playground. Though she was bored of the monotony of both it and the wasteland that comprised her surroundings, she was still full of that boundless energy and insatiable bloodlust that she was known for. And with good reason, as the weapons lining the harnesses and body armour that covered her stout form were making it hard to keep from thrusting her hands into her underwear right there and then.

With free reign over one of the most extensive armouries in the world, she had almost never made it beyond the walls of her starting location, though the promise of things to kill had eventually lured her out of her treasure trove. The acquisition that she had been most proud of, as well as quickest to equip, had been a pair of fingerless gloves on the backs of which were mounted her favoured cat's claws, this variation curved to allow easier disembowelling. To supplement these items in the field of close quarters combat, she had slipped two of the small, scythe-like Kamas into the back of her belt, just behind the pair of Colt .45 semi-automatic handguns.

Her ranged arsenal consisted of the dual pistols, as well as a larger calibre .50 Desert Eagle holstered under her right arm. Strapped to her back was an M16 that she had modified with a grenade launcher attachment to make it more interesting, as well as a shotgun of unknown manufacture, but which made a sound like a building being ripped in half when it was fired. Everyone knew that you had to have a shotgun when fighting the undead. What space remained on the straps criss-crossing her torso was filled with incendiaries and explosives, and every pocket was stuffed to bursting with ammunition for her various toys. Though she preferred to fight hand-to-hand, particularly where that involved dismemberment and evisceration, she understood the importance of making the correct preparations.

Though she momentarily wondered whether she would have to climb the thick metal gate that formed the compound's main entrance or simply blow it up, her ponderings were rendered moot when the door ground open, shaking dust and sand from its surface as it retracted into the concrete sheaths on either side. The smaller buildings, which shrank into the shade of the looming walls and towering edifices beyond, seemed disused and decrepit. As though to immediately confirm her suspicions, a chorus of low, rasping moans began from within the catacombs of the outhouses that lay between her and the main complex, like the stones of a graveyard with their church rising in the background.

Spacing her feet and lifting her arms in front of her body, Shakahnna readied her frame to engage her first target as the long-dead denizens of the Umbrella facility came out to greet her. Clad in tattered overalls, the uniforms of in-house security and occasionally casual attire, the zombies were emaciated, shrivelled shadows of what they once had been, ravaged by the heat and sun as much as by the virus rampaging through their veins. Whoever had opened the gate had perhaps assumed that she would be unable to reach the main buildings, although if that were the case then they evidently didn't know her very well. That or they simply wanted to play with her, in which case she was game.

Her first victim was a man clad in the sun-bleached blue overalls of a member of what was likely the maintenance crew, who may have at one time been rotund before decay had wasted the majority of his fatty tissues. His skin hung slack on his bones, drooping from his face around his cheeks and neck, giving him an appearance that was at once ghastly and faintly comical. She snatched his right wrist with her left hand, jerked him to the side and stamped on the reverse of his knee to bring him down, before gleefully punching four holes through the matted hair that clung to his withered scalp, puncturing his brain inside his skull. He jerked erratically, ejected blood from between his weathered lips and then hung slack on her claws. She kicked him off quickly, rounding on the rest of the pack that was encircling her.

"Mmm, tasty," she announced loudly, lifting her right wrist to her mouth and pretending to gnaw on it as if to show her opponents what they were missing out on.

Almost as though they were rising to the bait, three of the deceased employees lunged forward with what strength their gradually decomposing legs could manage. What had once been a young woman, whose skin had been reduced to peeling parchment and whose hair was a dry web gathered about its cranium, suddenly found itself without whatever had remained of its face. The grinning redhead ripped it from the front of its skull, before hooking her right arm under the opposing shoulder of the staggering cadaver and hurling it head over heels into the face of the next creature to approach her. The second corpse of the trio was swiftly disembowelled even as it collapsed under the weight of its thrown predecessor, lengths of rubbery, disease-ridden intestine spilling out from its corrupted innards as it slumped into a heap.

Almost nonchalantly, Shakahnna span on the spot, tearing the throat out of the last of the nearest cadavers, before grabbing it around the chest, using her right hip as a pivot, and throwing it onto the top of the pile she had created. With the stack completed, she lifted her right leg to its upper extremity, stretching the muscles in her thigh and calf as though she were trying to kick the sky, before slamming her heel down in an axe kick that crushed the brittle rib cages of her three challengers in one stroke. Raising her leg out of the bloodied hole that she had punched neatly through the small group of undead, she turned quickly enough to decapitate the next zombie to reach her, and followed it up by kicking the severed head so hard as it fell that it smashed the reverse of one milling abomination's skull open in a spray of blood, bone chips and cerebral matter.

Her blades transfixed the rib cage of another creature, impaling its lungs and heart, eliciting a haggard groan from its crumbling lips, before she lifted its wasted frame with her other hand and tossed it into the body of another approaching spectre. To ensure that the pinned corpse did not manage to free itself and pursue her, she slammed her heel through its skull, listening to the bone crack like brittle kindling beneath her boot. Shooting a wary glance about her person to search for more of the approaching dead and finding none, she bolted deeper into the compound, muscles humming gently with adrenaline and nostrils alight with the scent of corrupt blood and dead flesh. She didn't care for the ambience of the place; things were too quiet on the outside of the buildings and she hoped that it would be livelier within. Zombies weren't worth that much on the league table anyway.

Of course, that didn't stop her from taking her points, as well as her gratification, where she could find it. Gripping one meandering monster by its face with her right hand as she passed it, she smashed the back of its withered head against the wall behind it with enough force to compact its cranium to two thirds of its original size. Grey matter spilled in a putrid waterfall down its reverse as she spun on the spot and drove her blades into the next creature's spine, quickly opening her hand and seizing the string of ivory knots tightly in her fingers. She tugged the chord away from the sheath of flesh that had surrounded it, giggling as the zombie's limbs buckled all at once and it crumpled into a heap on the floor.

There were probably dozens more like them in this area, but Shakahnna was eager to locate something more fun to play with, and it wasn't as though there were any innocents here who might run afoul of the decrepit undead. Judging from their current state of decomposition it would be a few days at most before they became too rotten to even move, let alone pose a threat to anyone.

Heading in the direction of the ever-looming main complex towards greener pastures, she skidded to a halt as she came to the courtyard at the foot of the wide, concrete staircase that led up to the front of the building, seeing the front doors over the thick crowd of restless corpses. The staggering mass seemed almost like an awkward social function with each of its members avoiding both physical and eye contact with one another in a kind of bizarre, unrehearsed dance. The jubilant redhead was always on the prowl for new dance partners of her own, and she was eager to make the acquaintance of the several dozen former men and women before her. Allowing her hands to fall to her belt and seize around the handles of her Kamas, she joined their ranks with a spring in her step and rhythm on her side, though admittedly she was the only one of them with a pulse.

As the first dead maintenance worker lost its head in a spray of rotten gore, the world became a kaleidoscopic blur of adrenaline and bloodlust, soon to be sated.

--x--x--x--x--x--

The facility's interior was devoid of life, the lobby lit only by the dimming sunlight that shone in through its glass façade, painting everything within a subtle hue of ochre that failed to properly illuminate any of the fixtures. Shakahnna sat casually atop the wide reception desk with a cigarette clasped between her lips and her legs firmly crossed. Her rampage had ended several minutes ago once she had found herself at a loss for moving targets, and so she had abandoned the corpse piles that she had left in her wake in order to take a fag break. Both her attire and skin was stained with blood, thick and foul-smelling, and though she was immune to the infection that seemed to have killed everyone at the complex before her arrival, having it on her person was not as gratifying as fresh blood could be. Beneath a spatter of darkened crimson, the scar that bisected her right cheek was glowing a vibrant shade of purple with her arousal.

She had lost her Kamas at some point, though she was unable to remember exactly when, most likely when she had begun to resort to tearing her opponents apart with her bare hands for that extra, visceral sensation that made her blood pound and her loins ache. While she regretted the loss of what was probably her second favourite close combat weapon after the claws, she hoped that there would still be ample opportunity to indulge in carnage without them.

Reasoning that time was wasting, and that the Umbrella scum weren't going to kill themselves, she hopped down from her perch and spat the stub out onto the floor where it was promptly crushed into a grey smear on the linoleum beneath her boot. Then, with all the caution of a stampeding rhinoceros, she thundered across the entrance hall and slammed through the door into the room beyond. Or at least, that is what she would have done had there not been a man dressed in the familiar black fatigues of the Umbrella Special Forces coming the other way at the exact same moment. Evidently having heard the commotion she had made outside, or seen her approaching via the security cameras no doubt situated throughout the facility, he had timed his investigation so perfectly that it was almost farcical when the young woman shoved the door aside and straight into the face of the male attempting to travel in the other direction.

The redhead pitched sideways out of the doorframe as the soldier's cry of outrage and surprise was cut short by the rattle of his sub-machinegun firing on full automatic and puncturing the wooden panel over a dozen times as it swung back into place. For her part, the stout female was surprised only for the briefest of moments before her murderous desire reasserted itself. She ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip, catching just the faintest hint of the blood that was staining her face, and began to yearn for something a little more pure.

Her prayers were answered when the individual she had collided with blustered through the door where they had previously had their altercation, evidently hoping to find her shot dead just beyond it. He was unfortunate in two ways, as not only was she still very much alive, she had also worked herself into a homicidal frenzy and no sooner had he set foot on her side of the wall than she leapt on top of him and brought him crashing to the floor with her sitting astride his stomach. With his weapon pinned uncomfortably against his midriff by her bulk, he had no choice but to watch as her claws came down over and over onto his chest, tearing away his tactical vest, uniform shirt, skin and muscle tissue before beginning to slice gouges into his bones. He screamed loudly until he had finally bled to death, something that was exacerbated by the fact that he was unable to lift his hands to staunch the flow from the hollow she had carved into the front of his torso.

To anyone who had been listening then his demise would have sounded excruciating, and they likely would have thought twice about following him. This was the only possibility that the ebullient female needed to consider before she pressed her hands flat onto the exposed rib cage of her most recent kill, feeling the blood-slicked smoothness of the freshly-exposed ivory beneath her bare fingers, and pushed until her feet were resting flat on the floor. Asserting her weight onto the balls of her feet, she threw her head back, glowing hair cascading behind her in a golden torrent and revealing her face with its new sanguine mask. She raised an eyebrow coquettishly and blew her deceased playmate a kiss in return for the courtesy he had shown her, always one to pay her dues. And then she skipped away to look for his associates.

Her second victim from the U.S.F unit, which seemed to be there through nothing more than coincidence, was hurrying along the corridor towards the place where she had killed the first, no doubt having been the one to draw the short straw when it came to the investigation of his disappearance. She had ducked behind an unlit vending machine as he had passed by, before stepping out and sliding her blades into the underside of his chin beneath the filter of his gasmask even while the glowing scarlet pupils on his goggles shrank to focus on her grinning face. Pushing his head back on the long knives that had impaled it, she moved in close as though she were trying to steal a kiss, before running the flat of her tongue along the metal as his cooling blood began to ooze along its length.

It took her a moment to realise that he had been assigned a partner, and was as surprised as the other man was horrified when their eyes met. Fortunately for Shakahnna, her barbarism caused the third soldier she had encountered to hesitate long enough for her to position herself behind the corpse that she had just created, its flak jacket protecting her from the hail of bullets that were promptly fired at her head. She bowled him over with his erstwhile companion, slamming the burden that was the first individual's cadaver into him to throw him into disarray, before neatly slicing through his forearms to render him defenceless. His cry of pain descended into a strangled gurgle as she stabbed downwards and impaled his groin, a move that she took no end of satisfaction in. Confident that the rest of his team were still lurking elsewhere in the complex, she slit his throat and dropped him on the floor, smiling as a mist of gore speckled her cheeks and stained the rounded pearls of her teeth.

Reasoning that she was progressing in the right direction, she continued along the corridor until it reached a fork that progressed through a doorway or ascended via a staircase. Electing to move to the upper level, she found that she had entered an observation deck of some kind where the wall gave way to a wide glass panel that allowed her to overlook what appeared to be a control room.

In the room below, busying themselves with monitors, servers and laptops, was a group of technicians clad in clinical white, each of their uniforms emblazoned with the crest of their employers. Dotted around the chamber were the more nondescript figures of the Umbrella Special Forces unit sent to protect them, and it was seeing them that allowed Shakahnna her first insight into the reasons behind their presence. The facility had been long since abandoned judging from its indigenous undead population, and her visit seemed to have coincided with the corporation's attempt at retrieving its research data.

It seemed that the information that had led her here was not as incorrect as she had first suspected, and her heart leapt at the opportunity she was being granted to stymie the organisation's work.

Eager to make the acquaintance of the ones who would be providing her entertainment, but not wanting to alert them to her presence yet, she hurried back in the direction she had come from, skipping down the stairs and turning towards the door nearby that would lead her into their area. She was stopped in her tracks just before the door when it hissed open and another of the unfortunate U.S.F members emerged. Though she was unable to see his reaction through the mask covering his features, she imagined he had not expected to see someone else within the building, particularly not someone who was drenched in the blood of his team mates.

"Surprise!" she yelled, to which his response could only have been great surprise, before she lunged forward, impaling his heart with the claws on her right hand and his crotch with those on her left.

Sprawling to the floor, the soldier's corpse hit the ground with the young woman mounted atop it, the fingers tightening around the trigger of the sub-machinegun strapped around its neck and loosing a shower of hot brass into the room. There was a scream and an eruption of sparks from elsewhere in the room as the bullets punctured a nearby bank of monitors and possibly slaughtered a member of the retrieval team.

Shakahnna hit the floor on her knees, dragged down by the weight of the body that her blades were stabbed into, and looked up quickly to see another of the men taking aim at her. She responded by twisting her hands to counteract the suction that was keeping her rooted to the spot and ripping them free of their gory sheaths to take hold of her Desert Eagle. Rolling aside as a line of smoking holes stitched along the ground toward her and mowed a gully through the torso of her most recent victim, she drew a bead on the next from a crouch and fired.

The gun bucked furiously as those of its ilk were prone to do, and though the kick bruised her hands it was more than worth it to see the bloody hole it produced in her opponent's chest moments before it lifted him off his feet and carried him backwards along the carpeted row between the cubicles that made up the room. The result was twofold satisfying, as not only had the death been visually stimulating but now her hands would hurt whenever she clenched them, and that was awesome.

Responding to the sound of the high calibre weapon's discharge, the remainder of the Special Forces unit began to move toward her position, the sound of their heavy boots thudding against the floor the only clue she needed as to their whereabouts for her to quickly roll into a nearby cubicle and wait for them to draw closer. She had no doubt that half of the remaining troopers would be searching for her while the other half escorted their charges to safety.

A masked head appeared above, partially obscured by the partition wall that set the cubicle apart from the rest of the room, and the young woman immediately altered her position so that her weapon was aimed straight at the space that the figure's cranium was occupying behind the screen. She waited tensely for the sound of others in the surrounding area and tracked the movements of the mop of dark hair with the barrel of her handgun as she waited for the individual's partners to take up their own positions. Once she was certain that she knew roughly where each of them had positioned themselves, she put one of the fat metal slugs from her Desert Eagle clip into the face of the man she had been watching, grinning as the roughly circular window she had created through the temporary wall gave her a magnificent view of his head vaporising in a crimson mist.

Almost immediately, fire from the sub-machineguns of his associates shredded the upper half of the workstation, before each firearm fell silent. Shakahnna moved from her prone position onto her feet in one smooth motion, stepped from the floor to the decapitated chair nearby, onto the desk whose effects had been blasted into unrecognisable lumps of useless plastic, before quickly vaulting the crumbling wall and coming down on top of the next soldier who was attempting to reload on the other side.

Her claws landed first, cracking the male's goggles as her full weight pushed them through both his mask and his face. Turning on the spot, she brought her pistol around to aim at another black-clad figure as it appeared around the corner in a crouch, lifting its weapon with the intent to mow her down. She shot it a grin as a gesture of commiseration at not being fast enough, before pulling the trigger. The Special Forces member's body vanished between the neck, stomach and shoulders, leaving a severed pair of arms and a decapitated head lying atop a pile of entrails, oozing from the stump of two sprawled legs. Lifting her weapon to her lips in a rare display of theatricality, she blew away the pretend smoke issuing from the barrel as though she were the archetypal gunslinger extraordinaire.

Judging from what she had heard from within the cubicle, the rest of her playmates had left the control centre and now the fun of tracking them down was hers to enjoy. Holstering her handgun neatly under her arm where it belonged, she hopped to her feet once again and began to stalk through the office space in pursuit of her quarry.

"Ready or not," she murmured, the grin on her features holding fast and never faltering even for the slightest second, "here I come."

--x--x--x--x--x--

The first signs that Shakahnna found of the fleeing Umbrella employees was a number of bullet-riddled corpses along the corridors as she pursued them. Though the bodies were already in a state of absolute decomposition, it was clear that they had only recently been slain, and the slumped form of one of the technicians that she had observed earlier, most likely the individual who had been shot in the control room by one of the soldiers' errant blasts, only confirmed that she was hot on their trail. The young woman had quickly bled to death from her wounds, and though she had no great love for the corporation's meat puppets, that they had simply left her behind put a bitter taste in the redhead's mouth.

It was bad enough that they seemed so intent on shitting on everyone else, but then they didn't even look after their own. She also noted with contempt that they had stripped the fallen girl of her equipment before they had left her to die. It was fortunate that she had only bled out; she could honestly say that if she were the leader of a group being chased by her then she wouldn't leave anyone behind to face the kind of things that she did to people from that organisation.

As far as she could tell, however, the white-clad female had been a willing member of the company's retrieval unit, and had likely been receiving top dollar for her participation due to how dangerous the assignment was. The only remorse the S.T.A.R.S Lieutenant felt was for the fact that she had not claimed the points for that particular dead body.

Almost as though some cosmic force was aware of her regret, one of the U.S.F members who had been escorting the civilians to safety suddenly snaked an arm around her throat in an attempt to take her by surprise. It was then that Shakahnna realised that the wounded woman had been left as bait rather than because she was a burden to the other survivors, the man behind her evidently hoping that she would choose to target the casualty and turn her back long enough for him to remove her as a threat to his mission. The abhorrent thought of him waiting in the shadows while his supposed charge died a lingering, painful death was enough to make the stocky girl's blood boil. She hammered her elbow back into the soldier's stomach before he could make another move and he gave ground immediately, backing away from her to better assess his options. As far as the flame-haired huntress was concerned, there were no options.

Turning to face him, she found herself confronted by a man who, to her, was nothing more than another pawn in Umbrella's private army, the gasmask that provided his prevalent anonymity soon to be the thing providing his death shroud. The blade with which he had intended to either slit her throat or puncture her heart through her rib cage was clasped in his right hand as he surveyed her, particularly wary of the four blades attached to each of her gloves that would quickly shred him to ribbons if he were to grow careless. For her part, Shakahnna regarded the male's own weapon with something akin to contemplativeness, as she wondered if he would be willing to give her anymore scars with it before she killed him. After a moment of planned hesitation, both parties lunged forward.

His attack began unexpectedly with a defensive move when he wrapped a hand around her right wrist to keep her leading appendage turned away from his body. He then spun his weapon in his grip so that it was pointing downwards and attempted to slice at her, only for her to catch his blade between her claws. Though she twisted her arm in an attempt to wrest the knife from his grasp, he held it tightly, locking them both into a dangerous stalemate. She aimed a quick combination of three kicks to his legs, the first two aiming for pressure points on his limbs that he blocked by turning his lower half aside almost as though he was dancing with her, before the last thrust towards his groin only connected with his upper thigh. Though each of the blows had obviously caused him a degree of pain, it was decidedly better than the alternative.

Twisting his arms to force her upper limbs downwards, he lunged forward and slammed his forehead into her face. Though he narrowly missed crushing her button nose, he left heavy bruising on her right cheek and split a fresh laceration beneath her eye that she had created previously when it had swollen shut. Momentarily stunned, or so he thought, she stumbled backwards completely unaware of the vertical disembowelling slash that he immediately lashed out at her with. Her disequilibrium had been a feint, however, and with lightning fast movements she whipped the knife out of his hand with a slash of her right claws, opening four deep, parallel gashes in his wrist that began to weep crimson profusely onto the floor and along the length of his arm. Twirling a graceful pirouette on the spot, she kicked him firmly in the crotch to make up for her earlier failed attempt before stabbing her blades downwards into the top of his head.

There was a muffled grunt from behind the soldier's mask and then he slumped onto his knees, held upright only by the sharp metal prongs jutting into his crown. With a wiggle of her hips, Shakahnna used her momentum to dislodge them and watched as he sagged onto his back, dead.

She made a displeased face at the crumpled heap of person, annoyed that he had cost her a considerable amount of time in her pursuit, before hurrying on in a bid to make up the ground that she had lost. The trail of recently deceased undead picked up once more almost immediately after she continued along the corridor, and did so for a long while until she came to an area that had been plastered with signposting indicating it as the part of the complex dedicated to the mainframe. An automatic bulkhead that was supposed to be locked hummed back and forth on its hydraulics as its edge struck the withered corpse of a male researcher over and over again in its fractured torso, allowing the redhead to move through it without the proper clearance. She bowed her head respectfully, in the manner of a young lady of high society showing the proper courtesy to a gentleman suitor who was kind enough to hold the door.

There was the blip and whir of electronics from all around, noises that even the constant buzz of the door could not drown out when combined. On top of that, Shakahnna could hear the muffled sound of several people sobbing from the room directly ahead as well as hushed voices as two or more people held a separate conversation away from the rest. She wondered if the group had stopped to collect more data in spite of its considerable lead, and at once thought of how pig-headed Umbrella could be in regards to its research. Though it wasn't sensible to pause while being pursued by a violent multiple murderer with a grudge against their employers, it was exactly the kind of thing that members of the Special Forces would do.

"They're terrified," intoned one of the voices behind the next door, an older woman whose tone was stern and indignant, showing none of the emotion that her colleagues were evidently suffering from in the current situation, "and no wonder, considering what you're making them do with that woman right behind us..."

"She isn't a factor anymore, Professor Wells," someone, a male, interjected sharply, evidently someone who was used to giving commands and having them obeyed without question, perhaps the U.S.F unit's leader. Shakahnna allowed herself a knowing grin at his words, though this expression barely changed the broad smile that was already decorating her rounded face. "Simply have your subordinates finish up here as scheduled," he continued, asserting himself in the face of the female's aggression, "let us concern ourselves with your safety and that of your group while you concentrate on retrieving the data the company needs. Don't make this any more difficult than it has to be."

"Are you threatening me, Sergeant Lansing?" the one identified as the Professor queried, apparently intent on pushing the issue.

"Why would I waste my time?" he responded bluntly, "believe it or not, this isn't about you, your work or your current status within the company. All I care about is doing the job and getting out of here with my life intact. This pissing contest is a moot point considering that we're in exactly the same situation."

"Don't presume to talk to me like that, you drone," his antagonist shot back, most likely through gritted teeth, "we're nothing alike. My star may no longer be in the ascendancy, but there was a time when I had a bright future. The only fate you have ever been fit for is the kind that leaves the barrel of a gun, or a syringe. I'll hold my tongue for now, but that girl had better be as dead as you think she is."

The redhead sniggered quietly at that, aware that the squabbling Umbrella employees were both in as much trouble as one another because she was still very much alive. Unfortunately, while the first bulkhead into the mainframe had been conveniently propped open, the second was very much locked. Of course, that was why she had been sure to bring a sizeable amount of plastic explosives in her equipment. She reached into her pocket and brought out a block that was around the size of her palm, already primed with the detonator, which she then affixed to the centre of the door. Pausing for a moment, she pondered the unwelcome possibility that some of the men and women on the other side would die in the explosion before she had the opportunity to play with them.

"Knock, knock, knock!" she called through the metal barrier, timing each of her exclamations with a rap of her knuckles upon the surface, leaving them with no doubt that she was still a threat to their mission and their lives, "time to play! You guys hide and I'll count to ten!"

She paused for a moment, listening intently as the Sergeant began to bark out orders and arrange what remained of his unit into a defensive pattern while the female Professor hurried her group of civilians out of the mainframe and to a place of comparable safety. Once she was certain that they were ready to greet her with a warm reception, the redhead prodded at the face of the explosive to arm it before running back to the first door that she had passed, grabbing the corpse that was still blocking it by a handful of rags and hauling it out of the way so that the portal could finally be sealed. Then, with a look of manic glee on her cherubic features, she put her back to the wall beside the entrance to the mainframe and clamped her hands over her ears, waiting impatiently.

The detonation shook the corridor, its force crippling the door that she had just allowed to close, allowing it to breathe a hot, white tongue of flame from its bent edge before it began to vent foul-smelling black smoke all around her. The fire suppression system activated over her head and began to douse the area with water, while at the same time an air conditioning system began to draw the fumes out of the air. There was something vaguely ironic about how safe the facility would have been if it hadn't been experimenting with the Tyrant virus. Turning to her left, Shakahnna aimed a brutal kick at the edge of the warped panel that was blocking her path, forcing it back into its frame and causing it to stick halfway, more than wide enough for her to pass.

Almost immediately after kicking the debris aside a flurry of gunfire cut through the smoke that was still thick at the entrance to the next area, forcing her to duck back to her original position beside the broken door. The explosion she had caused had likely destroyed the sprinkler system and air scrubbers in the mainframe section, and though that would not cause any of the soldiers to suffocate due to their masks, visibility for both them and her would be drastically reduced.

Fortunately, it was situations much like this one that was the reason she had brought so many grenades.

She moved a hand to the bandolier that was strapped diagonally across her chest and selected one of the incendiaries from it, plucking it as though she were taking a plump, ripe fruit from the branch of a tree. For a reason that she was unable to fathom, it suddenly felt that much hotter within the complex, despite the fact that she was currently being drenched by the indoor downpour. Whipping her slick hair backwards out of her face with a shake of her head, she licked her lips and toyed with the explosive's detonation tape as she prepared to toss it back towards the waiting U.S.F members.

She was not given the chance, however, as the soldier who had drawn the short straw and been sent to confirm the unit's kill suddenly stepped out of the smoky hallway beside her. Acting on impulse, her arm shot out and snatched the throat out of the individual's neck with one abrupt motion. Realising what she had just done and coming to a rather devious conclusion, Shakahnna lifted her right hand and slammed the ball that she was holding into the gory cavity, tore the det-tape away between her fingers and kicked the dead man back into the smoke. He staggered out of sight and the young woman slid back to the wall as the rattle of fully-automatic fire resounded from within the opening, the remainder of the military group mistaking their deceased colleague for their opponent before a bark from their commander made them realise their mistake.

To what the redhead could only assume was their great surprise, the supposedly dead male unexpectedly exploded amongst them. There was a scream as someone was maimed by the detonation, followed by the authoritative roar of the leader and the clatter of boots on linoleum as the dregs of the unit began to run once more.

From what she had heard, there were only two soldiers left; if circumstances would allow then she would have to take her time with the last pair.

--x--x--x--x--x--


	2. Second Movement

**Second Movement: Goddess and Monsters**

By the time she caught up to her quarry, the flame-haired female was beginning to feel the effects of her one-woman operation more acutely than she had previously. Her adrenaline high was waning and her fatigue was beginning to eclipse her bloodlust as her driving motivation, making it difficult to want anything other than a nap. Combined with general tiredness, she was wet through, slick with sweat from her run and grimy from the pollutants in the smoke she had been forced to give chase into. Her hands were throbbing from the kick of her Desert Eagle, her right cheek was swollen and tender, and the laceration below her eye was bleeding, giving the appearance that she was crying bloody tears on one side of her face. She imagined that she looked pretty hot at this juncture, but felt too worn to really appreciate it.

As she walked out onto what seemed to be another observation deck, this one overlooking an expansive chamber decorated in clinical white and devoid of anything other than the people that she was searching for, she perked up slightly. Her tracking skills had atrophied since her days on the streets of the U.S. ghost towns during the original outbreaks, but she was pleased that they at least seemed to be getting the job done for her now. The two Special Forces members had reunited with the retinue of technicians, who now appeared to number six after their single loss. At the head of the pack strode the leader of the unit and an ash blonde woman in her middle-ages whom Shakahnna assumed to be the one known as Professor Wells. From what the stout redhead had gleaned from their earlier conversation, the latter may well have been a relatively high-ranking Umbrella researcher at some point, which potentially meant that she was worth a lot of points.

The sole surviving subordinate of the U.S.F group was at the rear of the procession, and looked up to confront the dirty, blood-stained image of the S.T.A.R.S Lieutenant standing above them. Seeing that she had been noticed, the female grinned broadly and waved at the group as the individual who had seen her brought the attention of the rest to her position. Just so that there was no failure to understand her intentions, she motioned across her throat with her cat claws, smiling all the while. The team's pace quickened noticeably.

Bubbling at the knowledge that they were within arm's reach once again, she skipped to the staircase that would lead her down to the room that they had been occupying. When she finally reached the area that she had seen them passing through moments before, however, she found that it was empty. In another viewing booth, directly opposite to the one she had recently been watching from, the group's two leaders were standing side-by-side, looking down at her. The Professor adjusted the spectacles that were resting on the bridge of her nose as she made a casual command over her shoulder, moments before the chamber came alive with the sound of sirens and the red glare of warning lights. Steel shutters slammed down over the doors at both ends and then the excitement had ended as quickly as it had begun.

Shakahnna shrugged, removing her Desert Eagle from its holster and aiming it directly at the face of the Special Forces commander. Even at a range of several dozen feet, the heavy calibre handgun would ordinarily have shattered the window and decapitated him. Unfortunately, the pane had not been fashioned from contemporary glass; as a result her bullet simply impacted loudly on its surface and came to rest halfway through, sending an intricate web of fractures shooting out in all directions. The Sergeant didn't even flinch.

"Fuck me," the redhead intoned in dismay, allowing her aim to sink slightly as she realised that the glass making up the window had been reinforced to levels that made her firearms useless. She could think of only one reason for that.

Almost to confirm her suspicions, there was the hiss of hydraulics as four evenly-spaced, circular irises opened in the ground around her, before mechanisms whirred and elevated a quartet of stout, metal pillars to rest on the chamber floor. They were heavily-reinforced pods, as wide as they were tall, each one hung with an abundance of tubes and circuitry apart from a single space on one side that was dominated by their sole, sealed openings. Thick frost caked the surface of each of the containers, steaming as it came into contact with the comparably warmer atmosphere. She could only describe them as artificial eggs waiting to hatch, and whatever was in them was unlikely to be pleased to see her.

Looking at each of the capsules surrounding her, she held her weapon loosely between her hands, waiting for one of them to give the first sign that it was opening. She was startled when the one directly behind her began to roar as it exhaled its internal gases, geysers of vapour blasting from vents on its exterior as the cryogenically frozen creature within was thawed rapidly. The process took several seconds and was so loud that it would have been difficult to determine whether the remaining steel tubes were also activating had she been focusing on that one alone. Instead she shot constant glances at the others while she waited for the first to be ready, not wanting to be caught between two charging monsters.

By the time the first container had opened, the gamine was ready for whatever it was hiding. Immediately after the door hummed aside, her Desert Eagle barked once, piercing the mist that was rolling from it and producing the satisfying sound of an unknown beast roaring in pain, as well as something else within the pod shattering as the bullet tore right through its intended target. This did not seem to be sufficient to eliminate her opponent, however, as an enormous fist, larger than her head, shot out of the obscuring fog on an arm that stretched like elastic and struck her full in the stomach.

The impact knocked her off her feet and sent her skidding backwards across the floor until she had almost careened into the capsule behind her. The high calibre handgun rattled along the ground elsewhere as it spun to a stop completely out of both her reach and sight. She was fortunate in that the weave of her body armour distributed the force of the blow across her front and prevented her from suffering any internal injuries, but it knocked the wind out of her regardless.

Warbling an oddly distorted growl, the creature that had struck her retracted its arm, a limb that was the same dull ochre as putrid bile, so that it was gripping the lower edge of the opening before it, before moving its second appendage to clamp around the upper lip. As the mist began to recede, it pulled itself forward to reveal the bulky, misshapen form of its head, the thick, gelatinous flesh pulled taut around its skeletal features. Its forelimbs were bulging with muscle, fat veins throbbing along their lengths, capable of extending to reach across long distances and supported by an immense back and shoulders that granted it the power it required to make use of this unique ability.

Pulling itself upright, it unfolded to its full height of eight feet, its arms trailing on the ground like those of an ape while its broad legs provided it with a solid base from which to attack from. The hulking abomination was sporting a gaping wound through its chest in place of its right pectoral muscle, though it barely seemed to acknowledge the fact that a hole had been punched straight through it.

Shakahnna recognised it as a Bandersnatch.

Bellowing loudly, it reared back and loosed its right arm towards her, missing her by inches as she rolled aside and slamming a crater in the linoleum covering the concrete floor with its immense fist. The young female's mind raced through the sum total of her experience of the creature that was now seeking to destroy her, including the literature she had been given as a member of S.T.A.R.S. These behemoths were industrial monsters, rarely encountered in the streets, and as such only organisations that specifically hunted down Umbrella's creations such as her own had any real contact with them.

As the extended limb swept around to swat her across the room, the redhead jumped to her feet and leapt neatly over the swinging appendage as though it were a skipping rope. Her hands fell to her sides, whipping the pair of Colt .45 handguns from their holsters and unleashing a rapid barrage in the direction of her opponent, only pausing once she had emptied both weapons of their eight bullets. She had focused her aim on its shoulders, at the point where its arms ceased to be a threat without their ability to stretch, and though very few of her shots had been off target, the creature seemed undeterred by the hail of fire.

It raised its second hand high into the air, the motion causing viscous olive fluid to drizzle from the craters pitting the skin along its upper torso, before lunging forward to bring its palm slamming into the floor where the human had previously been standing, the impact splintering the ground. Its adversary ejected her spent magazines as quickly as she could while remaining aware of the beast's erratic movements. She ran to her left to avoid the slap it had aimed at her and then darted back in the other direction to hop over the same limb before it could recover, all the while reloading her current weapon of choice.

Its right hand swung back at her, forcing her to drop into a crouch in order to avoid being decapitated. From that position she opened fire again, peppering its centre mass with high calibre rounds, though unfortunately without the resounding success that her Desert Eagle had granted her. Turning her eyes back to watch the arms, however, Shakahnna realised that the creature had been feinting when it had swung at her and was now trying its luck again while she was supposedly distracted. Grunting her annoyance, she hopped back onto her feet and leapt as high as she could to clear the rapidly approaching limb, the upper extremity of the bulbous length catching the toe of her boot and flipping her unceremoniously onto her face.

She flopped onto her back, gazing dazedly up at the ceiling and momentarily taking far too much notice of the various bloodstains and traces of gore that had not been cleaned from the test area. It occurred to her that with evidence like that in the vicinity she should have guessed that it was used for those purposes much earlier, but she had been desperate for something to kill and it was admittedly rather too late for thoughts like that now. Broken from her reverie by the sight of an immense arm coming towards her like a whip about to be cracked, she muttered a curse and rolled aside just as the ground where she had been lying was sundered.

Rising into a crouch once again, the young redhead fired off the remaining bullets in her current clips, each one leaving a deep, fist-sized crater in the creature's putty-like flesh. Ejecting her spent cartridges for a second time, her eyes snapped downwards when she became aware of the snare that was encircling her ankle. Watching as the area below her knee vanished between the monster's huge fingers, she swore loudly as it unceremoniously jerked her off her feet and into the air. Her arms and free leg flailed ineffectually, and her oaths became stronger and more heartfelt when the flurry of movement caused several spare magazines and boxes of ammunition to come loose from her pockets and clatter to the floor like very dangerous rain.

"Fuck off!" she insisted, continuing to thrash against the grip as the Bandersnatch brought her closer, either looking for a meal or simply wanting to have her near when it killed her.

That would be its mistake, she decided, and dropped her empty handguns in favour of slashing at the fingers ensnaring her foot with her claws, all the while preparing herself for impact with the floor if its grip loosened enough to drop her. It did not, however, and held her within arm's reach of its face, bringing its other limb around with the intention to crush her skull. She lashed out, raking four gouges in the taut mask of ochre gel that it was wearing over its skull, but it barely seemed to notice. Changing her intent immediately, she reached to her bandolier again and tore off another of the explosive devices, flicking off the primer tape and shoving it as hard as she could into the gaping wound left by her Desert Eagle.

It flinched at the probe she had thrust into it and in the moment it took to compose itself she slammed the underside of her free boot into the frayed tendons of its misshapen hand, tearing them apart and forcing herself out of its grasp. Twisting in the air with an almost feline grace, unexpected given her frame, she landed on her feet before dropping to one knee in order to absorb the impact of the fall. Before her opponent could even think about snatching her up again, she started running, diving behind the nearest of the four metal pods.

The monster let out a roar of what sounded like agitation and then exploded. Shreds of cooked meat and steaming olive blood, stinking like the muck from an abattoir in summer, spattered the floor in a wide circle around where its bottom half continued to stand until gravity took over and its severed legs slumped to the ground. Shakahnna grinned broadly and patted the packet of cigarettes that was still stowed in her vest, making a mental note to smoke one later.

Smoking one now was out of the question, she realised, as before the debris left behind by the last B.O.W had been given the opportunity to settle, there was a blast of noise that signified one of the other containers beginning its cacophonous thawing process. The capsule directly clockwise from the one that had held the Bandersnatch roared as roiling clouds of miasmal vapour issued from it. The air of the experimentation chamber was becoming thick with the chill mist as each monster was unleashed, and Shakahnna shivered in spite of herself. Although her clothing was designed for all climates, she was still drenched to the bone from her impromptu shower beneath the facility's sprinkler system and the sudden cold was exacerbating her discomfort.

Her attention was quickly arrested by the end of the second pod's preparatory cycle, prompting her to cast around for the pistols that she had dropped during the previous battle. Unfortunately, her Desert Eagle was still nowhere to be seen and her dual Colts were lost amid the sea of biological detritus and loose shells littering the ground at the centre of the room. Grudgingly, she reached back for one of her standby firearms, her right hand settling around the grip of the shotgun that she had strapped to her back. If the next creature to present itself seemed to be more than she could comfortably handle in her current state of fatigue and dishevelment then she would utilise the larger weapon. It would doubtless be enjoyable, because guns like that were fun, but she disliked not having a choice in the matter.

When the container finally opened, however, it was to the image of a B.O.W that she was unfamiliar with. Far larger than the beast that had preceded it, this one took up every inch of its module until all that the flame-haired female could see within was an elongated snout framed by two gargantuan paws, the claws of which were as long as a human femur. It grunted like a pig, a guttural intake of air as it sniffed the atmosphere around it, though due to its size the noise was so loud that it sent a stab of visceral dread through the young woman's guts. And then it stood up, pushing the reinforced steel shell around its body away as though it were nothing more substantial than paper, rising to a height in excess of ten feet and easily doubling her own stature.

It stood on two bulky hind legs, its feet immense and flat to support its full range of movement, while its forelimbs hovered in front of it as though it were unsure as to whether it was truly supposed to be bipedal. Above its snout glittered two circular, deep ebony orbs, the lids of which had been stapled back to give it a grotesque appearance and an unstable temperament. A shiver ran through its body and a coat of quills, each longer than the redhead's arm, fanned out across its form, completely covering its reverse as well as the backs of its hands in a deadly forest of impaling implements. Beneath the feathery, silver hair that decorated its underside and face, the creature's opponent could not help but notice that it was also equipped with a segmented carapace on all of the areas that were not protected by the spines.

Shakahnna was silent for a moment, and then...

"It's a fucking hedgehog!" she announced incredulously, taking in the form of what was nothing more than a docile night time visitor in her home country but for the horrendous surgical alterations and advanced viral mutation, paying particular attention to the azure sheen on its spikes, "a _blue_ fucking hedgehog! You guys are totally scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, Umbrella scum."

Almost as though it did not like her tone, the monster bellowed loudly, its snout splitting just beneath its nose to reveal a gaping maw lined with the savage teeth of a carnivore, slavering with the kind of fervour that wild animals possess after finding prey when food is scarce. It slammed its front legs into the ground and began to gallop towards her at the speed of an oncoming locomotive, prompting her eyes to bulge in their sockets before she scrambled to get out of its way.

Surprised by her movement, the beast attempted to stop its sprint and instead careened sideways into the pod opposite its own, several of its quills piercing the metal and impaling the creature within. The capsule ruptured and clouds of cryogenic gas billowed out through the opening, swallowing the mutant hedgehog and forcing the young woman to back as far away as she could for fear of being frozen on the spot by the deadly ivory smog. Almost immediately, the test chamber's atmosphere processors activated and began to remove the potentially lethal mist from the surroundings. Fortunately, though she had not suffered at all from the accident, both her current and prospective opponent had been summarily eliminated.

Pausing for a moment, she wiped the sweat from her brow and allowed herself a moment to be thankful for the warmth she was feeling inside her clothing, which was a welcome alternative to the pinch of the numbing air. She also permitted a few seconds to reflect on how much she hated running. Once she was certain that the sub-zero fog had receded completely, when both the punctured container had finished spilling its contents and the air regulators had siphoned the pollution away, she walked back towards the centre of the chamber. This time she drew her shotgun before looking in on the situation, intent on not being surprised a second time.

Everything that had been touched by the creeping chill now glistened with a sheen of frost, the thin layer of ice making the floor treacherous not only because of the likelihood of a fall, but also because the linoleum was frozen solid and thus no longer acted as a potential cushion. She stepped carefully, glad that her boots were heavy and possessed ample grip on their soles.

Unmoved since she had last seen it, the creature was standing stock still at the centre of the ice patch, sparkling as though it had been sprinkled with diamond dust. The effect was compelling, even though the monster itself was an abomination. Shakahnna could see lines of pink scar tissue and surgical staples criss-crossing the flesh between the segments of its carapace, confirming her initial belief that the armour was synthetic. On the palm of its clawed paw she could see that stencilled letters had been tattooed onto one of the few areas of bare skin on its body. They read "Genesis", most likely the codename for the B.O.W model. Genesis meant beginning, and the redhead found it ironic that the corporation's researchers would come up with something like that so close to the demise of their company. Or at least, that demise would be close if she got her own way.

Turning her eyes to the fractured cylinder through which the gargantuan hedgehog's spines were impaled, she chipped some of the ice away from the steel with the blades at her knuckles, electing to hold her shotgun in one hand while she did so. She smirked at the lettering that identified the dead inhabitant as a Hunter unit, although the symbol of the Greek alphabet that succeeded the familiar name was less recognisable and so she was unsure as to which sub-group it was. Considering that the Hunter breeds were the most common creatures for her to stumble across both during her work with S.T.A.R.S or when she had been on the streets, it was somewhat of a relief not to have to relive the tedium of combating the organisation's ever-dependable workhorse for the umpteenth time.

It occurred to her that perhaps she should quickly discover the identity of the last monster in the chamber before the Umbrella staff that she had been pursuing elected to release it on her. Unfortunately, she turned to catch her reflection in the soulless black eye of the Genesis and realised that its head had moved.

Darting away, the young female's weapon snapped up to target the creature's snout as it began to tremble, shaking away the heavy frost from its form as it began to regain its ability to move. Its movements subdued, it turned with agonising tenderness until it was finally facing her, the sound of ice flaking from its body en masse combining to form a loud cracking noise that punctuated every single one of its tentative steps. Its frigid quills rattling together produced a noise that was faintly reminiscent of the jingling bells of a festive soundtrack, a faintly cheerful by-product of the horrific scene before her that reminded her of better times but was so very out of place.

Shakahnna pulled the trigger and was promptly knocked off her feet by the combination of her shotgun's recoil and the ice beneath her boots making her legs slide out from underneath her. Landing on her rear, she clutched the firearm to her chest, quickly racking the slide to prepare the next round and kicking backwards along the ground in order to create some distance between herself and the monster she had just fired upon. The shot speckled its hide with hot, black fragments that steamed within their icy setting across its front, most of them having struck its armour, though several of them had penetrated its flesh at the cracks. Thick crimson oozed from the wounds, steaming as it poured between the surgically grafted plates before dribbling into lines and pools on the floor.

Enraged by its agony, the Genesis rose onto its hind legs and threw its head back, forcing its mouth open and letting out a roar that shook the surrounding area. The contortions of its muscles threw the remaining ice from its body in a blizzard of shining crystals, the sight momentarily awing the grounded female even as she forced herself back to her feet in order to confront her opponent. She levelled the shotgun a second time, bracing herself for the inevitable kick, and then fired at its snout. Though she was in a more stable firing position, the weapon still punched back when it went off and caused her right foot to skid out behind her, the knee striking the floor as her leg bent involuntarily. She cursed and chambered another shell as quickly as she could.

The creature bellowed as the shrapnel from the round tore its muzzle apart and it charged forward, once again on the offensive, the redhead finding herself in a vulnerable position from which she was unable to move before it bore down on her. Her weapon exploded a third time, peppering the armoured torso with metal shards and throwing her completely onto her back moments before the beast slammed its forelegs down on either side of her prone figure. The force of its weight alone was enough to leave deep grooves in the flooring as it made to maul her, drooling both saliva and blood from its mouth and injuries respectively.

Grunting with disgust, the black-clad huntress pumped the shotgun's barrel and fired it at point blank range, the blast blowing a hole through her adversary's chest armour that made it howl and rear backwards. Just when she was willing to hope that she had wounded it, however, it rocked towards her again, opening its maw in an attempt to devour her. Lifting her gun, the barrel jammed firmly between two immense and viciously sharp fangs, before it bit down and she pushed the firearm toward it, placing the grip into its mouth to wedge its jaws apart.

It snarled and swung its head back and forth, failing to realise what was impeding its ability to bite, before there was a tearing noise and its bottom jaw ripped open to reveal the bloodied handle of her shotgun. With its lower mandible impaled, it then attempted to pull its mouth open, only to find that it could no longer do so. As Shakahnna began to slide backwards out from under the monster, it lifted its right paw and began to desperately rake at the side of its snout in an attempt to undo the damage that had been wrought.

Intent on capitalising on its distraction, the young woman reached to her chest for another of her grenades, priming it and letting it fall at the Genesis' feet before rolling backwards out of its reach. Skidding on the ice that was still thick on the ground, the redhead hurried to put the capsule that had once contained the Bandersnatch between herself and the blast zone. When the device exploded she was treated to the pained scream of her adversary.

Unfortunately, though its chest had been pierced by the metal fragments of the bomb and its flesh scorched black across its underside, it still did not seem to be at its end. Toying with the idea of hurling two or three additional incendiaries in the creature's direction, her eyes settled on the form of her Desert Eagle, nestled amongst the debris from her current opponent's own container. Dashing out from behind her cover, the female thundered towards the weapon, turning to the side as she neared and dropping onto her hip while digging her boot into the frost to bring herself to a stop in a spray of shredded ivory. With a rake of her claws, she freed the handgun from its prison beneath the skin of frozen fluid and hefted it in both hands, hoping that the temperature would not impede its function.

She pulled the trigger and was rewarded with the sound of cracking ice, and then the deafening pop of the pistol firing, making her stagger as the kick knocked her off balance. Clear shards broke from the barrel as the bullet ejected in a spray of water, its passing having thawed the interior of the high calibre gun, though the added difficulty it had experienced ruined the aim entirely and the round flew wide. Determined not to lose the initiative, she set her shoulders a second time and fired, this instance lacking the delay of the first.

Considering the noise that the creature had been making up until this point, she had expected its death to be somewhat more climactic. However, when the second slug punctured the ebony bubble of its right eye and tore a hole through its cerebrum, it simply curled up into a pathetic ball, its quills sagging across the length of its body, and lay still. She eyed the spiny corpse for a moment longer and then collapsed onto the floor, dropping her powerful sidearm next to her and spreading her arms and legs as though she were preparing to make a snow angel. Instead, she simply breathed out a sigh of relief and muttered a profanity to herself, stealing a moment of respite while it was granted to her.

It was an unfortunately brief period of rest.

The last of the metal pods initiated its flash thaw procedure with a blast of noise and an enduring spray of chilling mist, the sound eliciting a groan of weariness from Shakahnna. Rolling up onto her feet, retrieving her fallen Desert Eagle in the process, she moved back behind the Bandersnatch's empty container, slipping the weapon back into its holster as she waited for the next contestant in the game that the Umbrella staff members were playing with her. Setting her back against the steel to prop herself up, she watched with trepidation overlapping fatigue as the final creature within the chamber began to stir.

Before the capsule had even begun to open, something huge slammed itself into the panel keeping it locked away, its body producing an immense bulge in the centre. As it began to hum open, the monster dived forward a second time and rammed its way out through the gradually parting shell before it, cleaving the specially forged alloy apart as it did so. Cracking the frozen ground beneath its weight, the Licker landed with an impact that shook the floor, the talons at the end of its four limbs keeping its enormous bulk firmly rooted to the spot. Almost the size of the recently deceased Genesis, the final beast ran its saliva-slicked, elongated tongue across the contours of its vicious teeth, the water from its suspension tank dripping from its exposed muscle tissue and cerebrum as though its entire body were slavering. It let out a breathy hiss, a sick parody of a human voice that had been warped by its growth into a hoarse groan that made the young woman's stomach churn.

She had never forgotten her encounters with those particular creations of Umbrella, the countless times they had been present on the streets, lurking in buildings that were supposed to be safe, killing people that she was meant to be saving. One night in particular held memories for her; the burned out buildings without a living soul to be found, a motel room with a bed that, though stained with the blood of its previous owner, could not help but look inviting, and the lull of fatigue that had forced her to let her guard down. Waking up to that familiar hiss as the abomination crawled across the ceiling above her, its claws embedded in the flaking plaster, finding that her weapon was not at hand, the feel of its stringy, sinewy flesh against her hands and face, and the sensation of its brain bursting between her fingers. It had been one of the most frightening experiences of her life and one that the most recent development in her hunt was bringing back in a horrific way.

It came to her, not as a memory, but as an instinct, something primal that she would have been unable to explain; Lickers did not possess eyes. If she remained quiet and waited for it to pass by then she could kill it, hopefully with a single round from her Desert Eagle, without it even realising what had happened. Unfortunately, staying silent in the presence of a creature as imposing as that one was easier to think about than do. Knowing that her life depended on it, however, she practically held her breath and tried to ignore the feeling that it was looking directly at her, reminding herself that it couldn't look at all.

It breathed again and for a moment Shakahnna wondered if perhaps it were attempting to unnerve her in spite of not knowing that she were there. Rearing up quickly and silently, the monster raised its head and tilted it from side to side, listening for her. Then it spun away from her and thundered across the chamber towards the wall, its claws leaving gouges in the floor as it went, before it began to scale the wall. Using its talons to cleave handholds in the vertical surface, it hauled its bulk upwards with a speed that made it seem as though it were defying gravity.

Rooted to the spot, the redhead could only watch as the beast drew level with the viewing window above, before withdrawing its upper right limb and slamming it into the glass. There was a crack that dislodged dozens of loose fragments from the spider's web of fractures that she had created earlier, and in that instant the young woman realised that the B.O.W had been able to hear the movements of her quarry within the booth above. Though it may have known that she was hiding within the room, it seemed to be more concerned with procuring its release than locating her. With a second swipe of its arm, the powerful musculature and artificially enhanced toughness of its claws combined to punch clean through the reinforced sheet, creating a hole large enough for it to clamber through.

With its opening made, the creature dragged itself in, a scream coming from within the control room as it did so, the noise provoking the weary female standing below into action.

"Hey, thou fucker!" she yelled after the eyeless behemoth, grabbing her modified M16 from her back and running towards the shuttered door that would lead her up to the observation deck, "you'd better not be stealing any of my points!"

Aiming her assault rifle towards the barrier that was keeping her locked within the chamber, she pulled the secondary trigger that fired the spring-loaded grenade launcher. The concussive effect of the explosive smashed the door apart and left a burning hole in the wall in its place for her for jump through in pursuit of the gargantuan enemy that was now terrorising her original quarry.

The flames were a welcome alternative to the room's creeping chill.

--x--x--x--x--x--


	3. Final Movement

**Final Movement: A Woman Scorned**

By the time Shakahnna blustered into the control room, one of the technicians was already dead and a second was close to joining it. The first corpse was lying sprawled between the window and the terminals that had been used to subject her to the battles below, a ring of bright red around its midriff where it had been lassoed by the Licker's whip-like tongue, before being drawn into its mouth and mauled. Its torso was a savaged mess of flesh, the expression on its face revealing that it had died in agony. The creature had spared time enough to gorge itself on the meat of its first kill before attempting to pursue the others, something which it had not found difficult due to the fact that the remaining survivors appeared to have left the second individual to its fate to buy themselves more time. The redhead felt her blood boiling again.

The lone Umbrella employee was lying on his back, screaming and crying incoherently while covering his face with his arms as he tried to fend the abomination off with wild kicks. Its razor tongue sliced gouges in his skin and infected him a dozen times with its saliva, its teeth gnawing chunks out of his body wherever they gained purchase. Pointing her rifle at her adversary's head and in the general direction of the prone male, she used the secondary trigger again. The grenade that she had loaded as she hurried up the stairs detonated on both of her unwitting targets, silencing the screams of the human and sending the monster rearing back with the upper part of its body aflame.

"Told you not to be stealing my points," she asserted, firing her weapon on full-auto and peppering the sinewy, crimson hide with hot brass slugs.

The behemoth writhed as she fired at it, puckered holes appearing along the length of its body, before the gun clicked empty. Rather than attempting to reload, the young woman threw it aside, slipping into a confident fighting stance as her opponent whipped its head around. Its tongue lashed out and she stepped aside, holding out her left arm and watching as the length of muscle wound itself around her forearm. The moment it pulled taut the skin beneath began to burn as the edges of the snare bit into her skin, blood welling from the lacerations and soaking into the taste buds that were caressing her flesh. Hauling back on the slick, pink rope that was slowly sawing through her appendage, she nonchalantly severed it with the claws on her right hand.

Her enemy bucked and screamed, the bleeding stub thrashing in its mouth as it was withdrawn. Slicing the remainder from her arm before it was able to do permanent damage, Shakahnna lunged forward with her blades outstretched, narrowly avoiding the retaliatory strike that was aimed in her direction by performing a forward roll that brought her under the arc of its attack and left her on her back directly beneath its centre mass. Grinning broadly, she stabbed first with her right fist and then with her left before abandoning herself completely to the compelling lust for violence, stabbing over and over again until she was covered from head-to-toe in the screeching monster's warm blood. The crimson fluid cooled on her skin and gave her goose bumps.

Punctured more than two dozen times, the Licker lifted its massive right limb and slammed it down onto the space that her head was occupying, missing her narrowly as she rolled aside in a flurry of vermilion-slicked skin and flame-coloured hair. Panting for breath as she sucked down air through blood-stained lips, each gasp tainted by the coppery taste of the fluid covering her face, she jumped back to her feet and neatly side-stepped a second attempt by the creature to step on her. Driving the claws that protruded from her right fist into its side, the female deftly vaulted up onto its back and locked her legs around the broad ribcage that she could feel beneath its flesh.

The abomination shook violently in a bid to remove her, but her leg strength was such that its struggle proved futile. The severed stump of its tongue flicked up at her face, prompting her to snatch it out of the air with her hand and pull it towards her as though it were the reins of a particularly uncooperative horse. Ignoring the biting sensation in her palm as the muscle's sharp edge began to tear through the leather of her glove and the skin beneath, she yanked back on the length as hard as she possibly could to make her adversary rear up beneath her. When its head was directly level with her own, she drew her right arm back and thrust her mounted daggers forward into the centre of its exposed brain tissue.

To look at a creature like a Licker and assume that it was easy to kill was usually the first mistake that people made. The fact that it wore its cerebrum on the outside of its skull did not make it an enemy simply dispatched; it was quick, strong, frightening and usually kept fighting even after its cranium had taken a great deal of damage. When Shakahnna stabbed it, however, her claws pierced straight through its head and emerged from its lower jaw, an attack that killed it stone dead on the spot.

Issuing a subdued groan from its slack mouth, the monster slumped forwards and crashed to the floor, the impact shaking the young woman from her seat on its back and throwing her to the floor. Rolling neatly upon contact with the ground, she obtained her vertical base with such a degree of poise that she felt it necessary to offer a florid bow to the invisible spectators who would no doubt be cheering her on.

Her head snapped around quickly when she remembered the rest of the men and women who were still running from her. Stooping to pick up her M16 and pausing only long enough to load a fresh magazine and grenade, the redhead hurried after them. She suspected that their respite in the control room had not been enough to completely restore the less physically fit members of the team, which meant that the technicians would be slowing the soldiers down, hopefully enough for her to easily catch up to them. Of course, she assumed that the latter group would not leave their charges behind but past experience did not fill her with confidence when it came to that.

The next corridors were almost indistinguishable from the rest of the hallways in the facility, their uniform décor clashing with the chaos that had been wrought throughout them. Bodies lay slumped, some long dead while others had been reanimated only to be eliminated by the survivors of the U.S.F unit who were desperately trying to reach safety somewhere ahead of her. Those bullet-riddled corpses that could debatably be referred to as "fresh kills" were the only clue she had as to their path through the identical passages.

Though they had, for the most part, denied her the opportunity to indulge herself with the zombies that now walked the abandoned chambers of the building, they had made it that much simpler for her to find them. Admittedly, they had taken steps to cover their trail, avoided certain undead in their path, executed others that were not on their route, as well as doubling back several times in order to confuse her, but those diversions delayed her only as long as it had taken the quarry to create them. The redhead suspected that, unless they attempted something exceptionally underhand, she would find herself reacquainted with them very soon.

There was a certain destiny to the door rigged with explosives that she burst through the moment after she had considered that very thought. She heard the clatter of pins from the grenades that had been fixed to the doorframe, counting around half a dozen, and immediately broke into a sprint. Traps such as that had been on her mind during the majority of her pursuit, primarily because she had learned in the past that it paid to be wary of such things when chasing the corporation's employees. She registered quickly that she was running into a disused office space, with papers and furnishings strewn haphazardly throughout, and dived over one of the desks that was located more than halfway into the room. Her right hand caught the edge as she landed, her weight dragging the item of furniture onto the floor so that it was lying with its upper surface facing towards her, the various appliances and pieces of paraphernalia crashing to the ground next to her.

The detonation rocked the floor and painted the entire chamber with the hues of flame. A piece of shrapnel embedded itself in the underside of the desk, a sharp, metal point exiting from the wood above her head. Another chunk exploded through and sliced a gash in her lower thigh, the heat of the steel cauterising the wound instantly and making her wince. Immediately the stench of burning began to roll out from the doorway accompanied by thick, black clouds of smoke. In response, the fire suppression systems kicked in and, for the second time that day, Shakahnna got wet.

Cursing to herself, the young woman rolled over onto her stomach and was about to stand when she noticed the pinpoint of red light that was playing across the floor between the column that her desk had occupied and the next. One of the Special Forces members had been lying in wait ready to finish her off had she not perished in the initial explosion. Moving to the side and pressing her body to the next workstation along, she waited until the soldier drew level with her position, watching as he turned his back on her to sweep his sub-machinegun to the left first. From his build, she inferred that he was the group's Sergeant, which did not tally with the experience she had of him to this point. It made little sense for him to be so quick to leave people behind and nominate his subordinates for the dangerous tasks, and then wait for her himself on this occasion.

Deciding that she would interrogate him later, she lashed out and slashed four deep grooves into his heel, her blades biting through the leather of his boot and laying open his Achilles tendon. Crying out behind his gasmask, he plummeted backwards to land beside her, firing a burst from his weapon involuntarily as he did so. Snatching the gun out of his hands, she tossed it to the floor and straddled his chest, stabbing him through the shoulder when he attempted to struggle free. She gripped the front of his rubber shroud and tugged it away from his face so that she could see his features. As was the case with most members of the corporation's private military, he was a thuggish looking individual with features pounded flat by constant physical conflict and weather by constant battles. She was also familiar with seeing them in pain and this instance was no exception.

"Shouldn't you have sent one of your bitches back to do the dirty work?" she asked him, the grin on her face a combination of glee and malice. Her claws twisted in his arm to emphasise her desire for an answer. Once he had stopped screaming he gave it to her.

"Figured that if you want something done right then you have to do it yourself," came his response, the voice he delivered it in shaky because of his agony and the fact that he was breathing heavily to counteract the nausea that was setting in due to shock. She watched as his face lost its colour and he began to sweat, his eyes swimming in and out of focus. "And I wanted to do you in for what you did," he growled through clenched teeth.

"Ditto," the redhead informed him, lifting her free set of blades and gently caressing his eyeballs with the points. The orbs burst in his skull, black jelly oozing out from between his lids as he started to scream again.

Ignoring him, she lifted her right hand away from his upper arm so that she could bring both up to his face, drawing the index knife of each in parallel lines across his cheeks. The furrows rapidly filled with crimson, giving the impression that he was crying bloody tears. Tilting her head to the side, she reasoned that her new playmate was looking a little on the gloomy side, which prompted her to bring her steel talons around and slice neatly at the corners of his open mouth.

"Smile!" she instructed brightly, stabbing him in the left shoulder this time.

He grimaced broadly at the pain, the movement of his facial muscles enough to split the incisions so that they spread across his features and intersected neatly with the vermilion lines already marring his appearance. Crying out louder this time, his expression seemed to brighten as his teeth crept out through his muscle tissue and skin to give him a grin that rivalled hers for broadness. She felt the familiar burn in the scar on her cheek, a faint simmer of kinship with the man beneath her, though not enough to grant him any mercy. Whether she had been deserving of her wound or not was debatable, whereas this individual most certainly warranted some retribution that she would have to carry out on behalf of the cosmos.

His right arm struggled to rise beneath her where she was pinning it to the floor beneath her knee, straining desperately to lift the only limb that still worked to the wounds lining his face. The attempt was futile due to both his weakness and her weight, and for a moment she was content to simply watch him writhe, giggling to herself at his torment. Blind and bleeding, his efforts to save himself were barely worth her notice. Fitting, she thought, since his attempts to save his team and the ones that they had been sent to protect were similarly paltry.

"The game's not over yet," she told him as he squirmed beneath her, "I've still got to find the others and I think they've had enough of a head start by now. It's been fun"

Before he was able to gather enough of his sense to respond, she leaned forward gently and planted a light kiss on his forehead, before rearing back and plunging her claws into both sides of his ribcage, impaling both of his lungs and his heart. His last breath was a grunt that descended into a gurgle as blood bubbled from his ruined mouth, drooling over his lips and filling the rips in his cheeks to give him a ghoulish, ensanguined smile. She returned the expression with a grin of her own before rising to her feet and giving chase to what remained of Umbrella's representatives in the facility.

--x--x--x--x--x--

In the absence of Sergeant Lansing, the final subordinate member of the U.S.F unit had done a dismally poor job of leading her professional colleagues to safety. It was clear that neither she nor the cadre of technicians she was escorting knew much of the layout of the complex, and indeed it seemed that their group had been improvising from the very start in a bid to secure their escape. Much of the strategy employed had most likely been from the mind of the commanding officer himself, a fact that was evidenced by how easy it was to hunt them down following his death. They had evidently believed themselves to be sufficiently close to their extraction point, or been possessed of enough faith in the ability of the leader, to eschew subterfuge in the final leg of their desperate retreat.

The black-clad female's shortcomings when it came to navigation were a moot point, however, as the more pressing matter of Shakahnna kicking her fucking head in was bringing to light all manner of other fallibilities. It had not been difficult to locate the fleeing scavenger team as they wound their way through the corridors and as such it had proved a simple matter to move ahead of them and ambush them as they made their way towards the roof. The soldier on point had failed to notice the redhead until the two were practically nose to nose, at which point the pursuer had almost casually slapped aside her guard and set about beating her to death.

With the non-combatants screaming and floundering now that their military escort had been all but eliminated, the flame-haired huntress hauled her latest kill to its feet. Gripping the bloodied mop of auburn hair atop her head in her right hand, she slammed her backwards into the wall, punching four identical holes into the plaster as her latest plaything struck the vertical surface with a sick crack. She released the hold quickly and struck the other woman with the back of the same fist, turning one side of her bullish face into a solid mass of purple bruising and completely ripping the skin from the other. Agonised breathing escaped the victim's mouth as she slumped onto her knees, pausing only to scream with her hands trembling in front of her ruined features, moments before a stiff kick to the jaw fractured her lower mandible and loosened several of her teeth as well as silencing her.

A second kick broke her nose, bursting the blood vessels within and sending forth geysers of crimson, while a third crushed the cartilage in her throat and caused her to choke. Spluttering as the fluid in her throat clogged her tightening airways, the injured Special Forces member lashed out blindly and desperately only to find her arm restrained by the hands of her attacker. Sneering, the redhead adjusted her grip around the offending appendage in one swift movement and shattered the bones throughout with a sharp twist. Her scream caught in her crippled windpipe, nothing but a strangled croak emerging from her lips.

Catching a fistful of gore-streaked, chestnut tresses, Shakahnna pulled the female's head up so that her neck was stretched by the weight of her body. She slapped the unbroken arm's feeble interference away with a motion that opened a set of deep gashes in the wrist beneath it, before stabbing all four blades to their hilt into the exposed throat. Then, with a twist and a jerk, she decapitated the soldier, holding her trophy aloft and lifting her face towards it so that the blood from the stump would drizzle across her features. Shaking her head as though she were taking a refreshing shower, the surviving fighter turned her attention back to the fleeing technicians.

Like a vermilion-painted ghoul, baring her fangs in a customary grin, she lowered her toy and reached back with her free hand to slam the door shut behind her, smashing the console beside it to provoke it into locking automatically. She had sealed the portal several rooms away in much the same manner upon first locating the group, which meant that, other than the two exits she had sabotaged, there was no escape. As she was the only person trapped inside with the foresight to bring any explosives, she was also the only person capable of making the broken doors open again.

Of course, she would gladly welcome any attempts from the Umbrella scavengers to take those devices from her.

Skipping back through the first room on her tour, her gleeful eyes settled upon the quivering form of one of the technicians. Rather than running like his colleagues, he had instead elected to curl up in a ball with his hands covering his head as though he were attempting the "duck and cover" manoeuvre. The usefulness of that particular strategy was debatable even during events when it was supposed to be performed; employing it in the current situation seemed somewhat foolhardy.

As though to prove the point, the redhead brandished the severed head in her possession at the cowering male, watching as his white uniform quickly became patterned with crimson blotches. He looked up nervously, possibly wondering why it was raining indoors, and then screamed just before the female impaled him through the eyes with her claws. Kicking him over onto his back, watching as the punctured orbs rolled in his bloody sockets, she bowed both of her heads in his direction as a show of mock gratitude. At least the ones who ran wekre fun to chase.

Tearing open his backpack with her blades, she reached in with her free hand and pulled out his laptop. It was an expensive model, confirming that Umbrella spared no expense with these reclamation operations. Shakahnna took great joy in slamming it on the floor and stamping on it until it was little more than a pile of plastic fragments and broken transistors, adding a gobbet of bloody saliva for good measure.

She continued, a spring in her step as she crossed the rest of the chamber, pausing her carefree gait only when she was forced to jerk backwards in order to avoid an office chair being swung downwards at her head in the doorway to the next room. The seat struck the floor, the force of its weight connecting with the ground shattering the wheels attached to the bottom, at the same time as the redhead's elbow slammed horizontally into the diaphragm of her assailant. The raven-haired woman who had accosted her immediately dropped to her knees and started retching, clamping her hands around her throat as she tried desperately to breathe through the blunt force trauma her counterpart had inflicted. The other female then lashed out with a kick worthy of the penalty spot that sent her flipping onto her back, the force of the blow knocking the wind out of her and making it even more difficult for the fallen technician to breathe.

"Nice one," the black-clad soldier acknowledged with a grin, kicking the broken chair away casually.

Still clutching the separated cranium that she had liberated from the shoulders of her first opponent, she straddled the prone female's chest and flayed four wounds on each side of her face in a bid to make her pretty. Taking pity on her as she gagged on the scream rising in her throat, she then proceeded to cut a second mouth in her windpipe to help her breathe. When her only thanks was a thick gurgle from her makeshift orifice, she shimmied up onto her feet once again.

There were still two more targets that required her attention. Sparing a moment only to kick the freshest corpse's bag to pieces, she skipped on in pursuit of the last pair of technicians.

The remainder of the sealed rooms passed quickly as she hurried through them, slowing only when she could set her eyes on the locked door that marked the place where she had initially caught up with her quarry. She found one of the individuals she was looking for slamming his foot into the barrier in a desperate attempt to release himself from the trap. Unfortunately, it was strong enough that his best efforts would not be sufficient and his inattention meant that the young woman could approach to within arm's distance of him before he spun around to confront her. Almost immediately he shrank back as far as he could, a stricken look taking his features as he finally came face-to-face with the person that had been trying to kill him for the past several hours.

"Not working?" Shakahnna enquired sweetly, tilting her head and clasping her hands behind her back as she did so.

"You're gonna kill me," he moaned quietly, trembling as the redhead leaned in to leer in his face.

"Damn right," she asserted brightly, much to his horror, before slicing open his belly.

She watched as he slumped forward onto his knees, hands fumbling with slippery lengths of intestine as they fell from the hole in his stomach. Ignoring his struggle, she pulled him toward her before tearing open his bag also and taking out the device he had been using to download Umbrella's archives. Lifting it up in her lone free hand to examine it for a moment, she slammed it down onto the floor and put her boot to it in much the same way as the first. Beside the crushed remnants of the laptop lay the disembowelled male, lying very still in a creeping pool of crimson liquid. His features were twisted in pain and his arms were still wrapped around the thick tubes that had spilled from within him, but his movements had ceased.

Looking up, she spotted the white-clad figure of Professor Wells standing in the entranceway to the room she had just entered from. She lifted her head, aloof, and adjusted the spectacles on the bridge of her nose. The young woman momentarily wondered how the scientist had managed to evade her, but then with the security of the surroundings and her trained awareness, she had not been looking particularly hard. She hadn't needed to, because the last victim would either be found or come looking for her eventually.

"This flash drive contains all of the information collated from the devices that you have destroyed thus far," the blonde told her, lifting a plastic stick the size of her index finger out of her pocket and holding it out so that the junior of the two females could see it, "I imagine it would be worth quite a lot of money to the right individuals. I offer it to you in exchange for my life."

The researcher tossed the item toward her antagonist, who snatched it out of the air neatly with her right hand. Without even looking at it, she cupped one end in her palm and placed her thumb on the other, snapping it neatly in half.

"Not interested," she responded bluntly, casting it away before lifting the severed head that was still in her possession so that it was on the same level as her own, "this is much more fun to play with. Catch!"

She smiled sweetly and then threw the body part at the individual standing opposite her, watching it tumble through the air with its slipstream of bloodied chestnut hair. Wells instinctively caught it in her hands as it struck her in the stomach, flinching and dropping it with a single downward glance at what it was that she was holding. In a moment she had recaptured her superior air, but the impression of her momentary vulnerability remained superimposed upon her person. The scarlet splotch on her clothing also served as a reminder.

"Barbarian," she grunted, kicking the cranium away from her feet in a manner that suggested disgust.

"Maybe, but I don't member having ever tied anyone down and injected them with something that turns them into a monster," the redhead pointed out to her, momentarily growing serious before her grin reasserted itself, "so at least I'm not a pussy like you."

"You little nothing," the Professor snarled, dipping her hand into her pocket for a second time and removing what appeared to be a metal pen from within, "I was once at the forefront of scientific endeavour. I won't die at the hands of an uncultured beast such as you."

Before Shakahnna could react, the blonde snapped the cap from the object she was holding and swung it across her body, stabbing it into her right shoulder through her work shirt. The younger female sprinted towards her, covering the distance between them with minimal effort, before lashing out with a swipe that attempted to knock the apparent syringe out of her hand. She dropped the needle regardless and brought her hand around to seize the soldier's wrist in a grip that halted her in mid-swing, making her gasp as the pressure bit into her flesh.

In a bid to free herself, the redhead stabbed with her remaining hand, only for the scientist to suddenly restrain that one also. In spite of her seemingly frail frame, she was apparently capable of extreme feats of strength when pushed. An alternate explanation was that the vial in her injector had not been poison as the junior had momentarily feared, but one of the aforementioned mutation-inducing substances. Glancing down, she watched as the muscles bulged and rippled across the other woman's bare forearms, her grip tightening as short, sharp convulsions rocked her body. Looking up again, the flame-haired fighter noticed that her opponent's face had fallen forward, her flaxen hair forming a curtain and obscuring her bespectacled features.

"I won't die on your terms, at least," she breathed, her voice warped into a sinister parody of her original aloof tones, before her head snapped up to reveal that her eyes had turned amber from corner to corner behind their lenses.

Releasing her hold, she stepped forward and swept her arm up in a broad arc that caught the huntress firmly across the torso. The force behind the blow lifted her off her feet and propelled her backwards across the room, before gravity brought her back down to skid along the carpet, the friction leaving red splotches on her skin even through her clothing. Though it was not the first time that day to experience the sensation of being swatted like an insect, she could not help but feel a degree more embarrassment about this occasion. As she watched, however, that sensation of damaged pride began to wane.

Laughing coldly, Wells removed her glasses and cast them aside as the skin on her face began to mottle and turn stone grey. The ash blonde tresses writhed like platinum snakes as they also changed, entwining to become locks of flesh that mimicked the original style of their predecessors. Her flesh continued to distend as the rapid development of her musculature caused her frame to expand. Though she had already been taller than the soldier, she grew further vertically as well as broader, until the width of her shoulders almost matched that of her adversary, the uniform she was wearing shredding along points of stress and remaining upon her person only in tatters. The laughter had ended in silence, leaving only a trace of a cruel smile on the lips that now belonged to the Tyrant Veronica.

"Fuck yeah," Shakahnna muttered, as she sat up from her prone position halfway across the room and blew the fiery strands that were obscuring her face away so that she could see the creature that was standing where the Professor had once been. Things suddenly seemed to have gotten that much more interesting.

Rolling backwards to bring herself back to her feet, she slipped neatly into her usual fighting stance, aware that her opponent was watching intently with its glassy, jasper orbs. Tyrant models lacked the animalistic tendencies of their fellow B.O.W organisms, favouring a kind of mindless focus over simple primal instincts. Though she had fought with female models of the company's supposed ultimate weapon in the past, this was the first time that the redhead had come into contact with one that had transformed directly from human rather than being developed in a laboratory. It was also the first time she had been forced into conflict with one while physically fucked and running low on both ammunition and weapons, but even knowing her own situation she tried to keep an open mind in regards to her opponent's abilities.

In spite of this, she could not help but be surprised when it lifted its right hand to its face, rotating it slightly as though it were studying it, before its fingers suddenly bulged and split along their lengths. Talons erupted out through the skin, sleek and sharp, the colour of fresh bone. They were an organic parody of the young woman's own blades, but had grown to the length of her opponent's forearm in place of each of the digits on both hands. Droplets of blood rolled along their edges from where they had burst from within the flesh and they gleamed in the light with the skin of crimson fluid that was coating them. Whipping its altered hand down to its side, the claws whistled as they sliced the air.

"My kind of girl," the redhead commented, beckoning her adversary toward her with a wave of her fingers, the gore-streaked knives attached to them flicking specks into the air as she did so.

There was a tearing noise as the creature's feet came loose from the simple slip-on shoes that the Professor had been wearing, before all that could be heard was the sound of its bare feet slamming on the carpeted floor. It cleared the distance between them in a heartbeat, swiping with a force that would have decapitated the young female had she not ducked into a crouch, though a number of short, flame-coloured fibres tumbled through the air to illustrate how close her escape had been. Her leg swept across the ground, the solid muscle of her shin striking at the calf of her enemy and finding nothing but impervious flesh that held firm against the crushing impact. Slashing across its thighs and leaving deep grooves in its thickened skin for good measure, she rolled aside as it lashed down at her.

Rising to her feet a second time, Shakahnna watched as the Tyrant turned its head to the side to fix her with its cold gaze, its movements logically mechanical but possessing a hauntingly graceful femininity. The Veronica breed was an uncommon variety of B.O.W, more lithe and agile than their bulky male counterparts, who were closer to being war machines than the dancers that their sister-constructs sometimes resembled. Almost to demonstrate that property, the creature spun on the spot, planting its left foot firmly on the floor and swinging its right in a powerful arc aimed at her head.

When she ducked again to avoid the blow, which would have crushed her skull, it continued to spin and brought its left arm around in a backhand strike that nearly disembowelled her as she rose. Slipping backwards, her hands slapped down as she fell into the crab position, the movement allowing her to narrowly avoid the claws on its right hand as it continued to twirl in its deadly pirouette. She pushed off with her feet to carry the rest of her body into a handstand and neatly dropped into her customary ready position once more.

She was on the defensive almost immediately after righting herself as the effeminate bio-weapon asserted its own footing and began to slash rapidly at her stout frame. Dodging the first flurry, the redhead soon found herself unable to avoid parrying the blows with her own claws, the fused bones clacking against tempered steel as she blocked the lightning fast strikes of her opponent. In spite of the craftsmanship that had gone into the artificial talons, the young woman was concerned that her weapons would fracture against the enhanced endoskeleton of the creature.

Narrowly turning aside a particularly vicious swipe with a motion of her blades, provoking a screech and spray of sparks from the steel, she let out a gasp as one of the razor digits from the opposing hand came in under her guard and left a shallow laceration on her belly. The pain was bracing, but the sensation of her bandolier falling from its place on her shoulder made her cry out in dismay, a feeling that was exacerbated when the strap became tangled between her feet and she tripped backwards over it. As soon as her backside struck the floor, she lifted her hands to make an "X" shape with her knives to catch the downward swipe of her adversary's left hand, which promptly forced her into a completely horizontal position. Her eyes widened when they took in the poised right arm that was preparing to impale her.

Pushing against the pressure of the limb that was holding her pinned for the killing stroke, Shakahnna had visions of the creature's claws sinking undeterred into her chest and momentarily wondered if she would live long enough to orgasm. Before she had time to find out, however, there was a sudden imbalance in her guard and she yawed to the right. Rolling out from under the Tyrant, she looked back to find it propping itself up on its left hand, its other appendage still raised in preparation. On the floor beneath it were the blades from her right glove, the sight of which prompted her to glance at the bent stubs that remained fixed to her fist. Rising to its feet, her opponent flexed its talons and continued to fix her with its sinisterly emotionless smile.

Altering her stance so that the arm still possessing claws was leading, the redhead met her opponent's attack head-on once again. She turned aside the strikes aimed for her vital areas with a degree of desperation, her trained speed depleted by fatigue and injury while the virus-borne capabilities of the former Professor Wells showed no such deficits. All the while she was plagued by the knowledge that she was, to all intents and purposes, one-handed. On top of that, she was concerned that the alloy that made up her weapons was not as strong as it had first appeared.

It raked four burning lines in her forearm faster than she could acknowledge, the sudden painful stimuli making her hop back a step, a motion that saved her from a disembowelling strike that curved lower than she had anticipated. The bone daggers carved their parallel trails in her sternum and blood began to seep into her waistline, but the Tyrant momentarily paused its attack as though it were expecting her to be dead. Lunging forward, the huntress cleaved gouges of her own in the towering creature's face, the amber orb in its left socket bursting as one of the knives sliced through it. Before she could celebrate, however, it struck her with its arm and threw her clear across the room where she crashed into a desk, demolishing someone's painstakingly organised workstation.

The huntress dropped to the floor, landing painfully on her posterior and knocking over an office chair as she slid to the ground. Swearing to herself, she gripped the edge of the tabletop and pulled herself back to her vertical base, watching as her adversary's head ticked distractedly; it was no doubt attempting to adjust itself to half vision. The young woman decided to assist by giving it something to focus on and hefted the computer monitor from nearby, hurling it as hard as she could at the monster's head. She was unsurprised when it easily swatted the object out of the air, cleaving it into pieces with its claws as it did so. Even with an injury that would normally cripple a human being, or even a standard B.O.W entity, Umbrella's vaunted perfect life form persevered.

It powered forward, its remaining eye focused on her, not stopping even when she tossed the chair she had fallen on in its direction or flipped the desk into its face. It pulped both items of furniture with vicious swipes of its bladed hands, before quickly advancing on her. Ducking away from yet another decapitating stroke, Shakahnna slapped her palms against the wall in a bid to stop herself careening into it as she rose to her feet. Her second dodge was amid a cloud of pulverised plaster as the Tyrant's arm sank to the elbow in the brickwork where her head had been moments before.

It struggled for a moment, the shell of concrete that was encapsulating its limb rooting it to the spot and leaving it open to attacks. Whipping its free hand around to ward off the human female standing behind it, it placed one slender foot to the vertical surface and added its full weight in order to finally free itself. When it turned to face her again, however, it was staring into the barrel of her Desert Eagle. Its mechanical logic most likely failed to acknowledge the broad grin on her features.

"Who's dying on their own terms now, bitch?" the redhead queried, pulling the trigger three times in quick succession.

The first bullet tore a bloody crater in the Tyrant's chest, pulping whatever semblance of internal organs the creature happened to have in that area of its body, before the second ruptured its stomach. Blood that was still crimson, much the same as Wells' had been, poured from its wounds, but its inhuman determination was one thing it did not have in common with its previous form. It staggered forward, feeling no pain but slowed by its injuries regardless, until the soldier's last bullet connected, tearing open the side of its head and blasting the majority of its brain matter onto the wall behind it.

Its single eye still focused on her face, it slumped wordlessly to its knees before collapsing completely onto its side. The final movement it made drew it into a foetal ball where it finally died.

Breathing a deep sigh of relief, the huntress slipped the sidearm back into its underarm holster and sat down cross-legged on the floor, staring at the remains of her opponent. Covered in lacerations and bruises from head-to-toe, soaked through with grimy water, sweat and blood, tired and fatigued after having fought her way through thirteen Umbrella Special Forces members, four extremely powerful B.O.W entities and countless zombies, Shakahnna believed that the time was right for a cigarette.

--x--x--x--x--x--

Albert Wesker was what many people considered to be a man of means. Very few of even the wealthiest individuals would have been capable of providing their beloved with such a smorgasbord of carnage to suit their violent lusts. It was his pleasure to have done just that and though the company would mourn the loss of a capable Special Forces Sergeant in Mister Lansing and a competent researcher in Professor Wells, the combat data provided by his love would no doubt be ample compensation.

In his secure chamber, he rotated his high-backed leather seat as he surveyed each of the security feeds from the complex in turn. The recordings would no doubt prove to be most enlightening for both his subordinates and himself upon later perusal.

There was a loud splintering noise behind him, which he turned away from his viewing to address. He raised a slender, blond eyebrow over the rim of his sunglasses as his curious gaze focused upon the form of Shakahnna Morgan. Her battered form was hunched and breathing heavily, but the grin on her face was one of pure sadomasochistic contentment. The door that she had kicked through was mangled on its hinges, a shaft of artificial light illuminating the darkened room from the exterior. She hefted her severed bandolier and tossed it down on the floor, leering at him as she did so.

"Found you," she announced brightly.

"I will inform the U.S.F unit's evacuation helicopter that it will no longer be required," he stated, moving a hand to the controls of the intercom system that had been installed into his armrest. Her smirk broadened slightly.

"Already did," the redhead informed him, throwing her modified assault rifle beside her strap. The implication of the empty grenade launcher was enough to cause him to retract his hand from the console.

"Then it would appear that this matter is concluded, my dear," he asserted bluntly, narrowing his eyes when she then began to shake her head, the expression on her features remaining static.

"Not done yet," she said, aiming her remaining talons toward his face as she began to move forward, her pace quickening until she was sprinting.

She charged at him, leaping neatly onto his seated form and placing her knees on either side of his right leg. Needing no encouragement, she sank her claws into his chest so that the blades pierced his ribcage and provoked a spray of blood from within. Restraining her left wrist with his own immense right hand, he held the curved knives to their hilt in his torso, using his other hand to pull her forwards into an intense, passionate kiss.

Wesker reflected that neither of them would be truly done for quite a few hours yet...

--x--x--x--x--x--


End file.
